I'm looking at a way that I can select a check box on an incident and have it select a couple of drop downs? I think i've read somewhere that a new(er) version of service desk can do this although I can't find this information now. If it doesn't then I'm thinking about 2 other options

1) Using a dummy incident window, some copy attributes and an automatic action (not that keen as it's a lot of object designer work- messing up my incident object!)

You should be able to create a filter which restricts the drop-downs based on your checkbox being selected. In Web Desk it would automatically populate the drop-downs if only one value is returned by the filter but I think that in console the user would need to manually select them even though only one value will be available to select. Might be worth a quick try if this is still something you are investigating.

Alternatively, a calculation like you suggested would be a good route.

I created 2 filters. One on each relationship to the dropdown on the Incident object. The problem with this is I'm using a template with the drop downs preselected (which would be correct for the majority of incidents) and the filter won't overwrite the template selections (in console anyway)

In terms of the advantages of using a calculation rather than an automatic action, with the calculation you can set "is the calculate on change" setting (not web desk) so that the value will populate as the boolean is ticked rather than when the form is saved. Using an automatic action would populate the dropdown only when the action is run. However with a calculation you may need to create new attributes which are calculated rather than using your existing drop downs. This is because calculated fields are read only on the form and I am assuming that you may want people to manually select values within the drop-down too?

As an alternative, I've just been given a different suggestion from someone. You might find this easier to implement and this will change your value as soon as the boolean is ticked:

1. Create a new relationship between your two objects, the process and the drop-down. For example, a second relationship between the incident and the impact objects, called Impact2.

3. On your template populate this new drop-down (e.g Impact2) with what you want to go into the original drop-down relationship when you tick your boolean. Then hide your new drop-down off your window.

4. Within Object Designer locate your original relationship attribute (for example incident.impact) and click on the Filter Selectors property. Create a new filter rule but rather than selecting to create a new filter query select the "select a runtime value" option. Then you can select your newly created drop-down (Impact2) so that this is populated with the value from the template.

5. Add a condition so that this only triggers when the boolean is selected.

6. If you also want the list of available choices in the drop-down to be limited as well then you would need to also add a filter rule.

The only problem is (and i'm not sure if you explained this to me already) I can't get the Response Level to recalculate after running the manual action to kick off the automatic action. It seems to be stuck on whatever the template specified originally.

It also doesn't ask you to save the changes to the incident (tick box and drop downs) although they do seem to have saved

When you say that the response level is stuck on what the template specified, do you mean the response level field itself doesn't change or that new escalation points aren't applied? If the latter then perhaps your incident isn't at the activation status for the response level?

If you need to get this resolved soon I think you may do better logging a case for this one, you may be asked to upload a copy of the database. Unfortunately I would need to run through the design in order to advise further and it may be a few days now before I get the time for this.